Official: 18 people killed in Ciudad Juarez

(CNN) -- Eighteen people were killed in separate shootings throughout Mexico's Ciudad Juarez on Saturday, marking it as one of the bloodiest days this year in the nation's most violent city, officials said Sunday.

In one incident, a family of seven was slaughtered while they were outside their home in the southeastern part of the city, Chihuahua State Attorney General's Office spokesman Carlos Gonzalez said.

"Among [the seven killed] were two brothers who we believe were targeted," Gonzalez said.

Local newspaper El Diario de Juarez reported that five of the bodies were found inside a car and another two bodies were found lying in the street. In another gruesome incident, an unidentified dismembered body was found wrapped in a blanket inside a bag, Gonzalez said.

"The most violent day we had here was earlier this year when 24 people were murdered," he said. "This is becoming too common."

Figures provided by the Chihuahua Attorney General's office and corroborated by Gonzalez showed that 352 people were killed in the month of October, making it the bloodiest month in Juarez since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his war on organized crime four years ago.

Local estimates put Juarez's death toll at more than 2,600 so far this year. In 2009, at least 2,575 people were killed in the city, according to a tally by television station XHIJ.